


Of Blood And Memories

by alyyks



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, GFY, M/M, Magic, Rare Pairings, the Force and magic are separate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-09-26 18:02:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9914519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: In a time of legends, Cassius Vhett had been more powerful than any other before him—and he had bound his legacy and his magic in the existences of his descendants.Boba Fett managed to hide that legacy until Bespin, a shared past with Cloud City's Baron Administrator, and a Sith Lord determined to use Fett for his own ends.





	1. Fleeing Bespin - I

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Unruly Narrative Lagomorphs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353133) by [Yarol2075](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yarol2075/pseuds/Yarol2075). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Norcumi who assured me this made sense (any remaining mistakes are mine).
> 
> It's probably best to read Chapter 13 of Unruly Narrative Lagomorph by Yarol2075, the work that gave me plot bunnies to no ends, prior to reading this ;)

Bread and salt and blood.

Boba Fett had no personal loyalty but to himself and to the memories of his father. Professional loyalty, now, that came with the job, in the Mandalorian tradition. Get a _beroya_ a contract, a job, and that _beroya_ would be loyal to you during that time. It was hard to swallow, for some. Some employers disagreed with that, quite strongly. Fett never took a contract from those more than once.

Fett might take work from the Empire, but he had no loyalty to it. It just had the deepest pockets, the most open bounties: working for them was a calculated risk weighted with a fear he had never been able to part with.

That risk had just turned into the kind of trouble even he would have problems getting out of, with Vader knowing Fett was a Vhett descendant, with Fett stripped of his armor and locked in a Bespin’s cell until the Rebels he had been following arrived.

Figuring out where the concussion—given by Vader, who had thrown him into a wall when he had refused to willingly use magic for him—ended and where the magic bound in his bones started was impossible. Even in the Republic prison during the Clone Wars, he hadn’t been that naked. He had been able to bribe a guard then, a clone, into letting him keep his necklace, the cold weight of _beskar_ keeping him grounded. Here, under the eye of Vader and what he wanted Fett to do, there was no bribing possible.

Everything felt a little too off, a little too vivid, and too sharp when it wasn’t blurry. His skin seemed to vibrate, ready to peel off his bones, and the nausea had yet to abate, even if he had thrown up all over Calrissian earlier. Lando deserved that and more, for getting him into that position, for telling Vader Fett could make it rain, for the relationship they had once shared that had gotten them there. Fett should have known better, should have walked away the moment that job had been done.

Fett should have known better and he had still fallen for the man, had kept the memories close to him.

He licked lips gone too dry too fast with a tongue that did not feel like his own. Bread and salt and blood: without counting the physical strain and mental toll on the caster, those were basic ingredients used for the darker things he knew to do, to bind one’s will to another, and to resurrect the dead.

The fear weighed heavy in his guts. This was more than trouble; Vader would not let up, would find a way to force him to make the spells. The coercion, the twisting of intent, it would result in horrors not seen since… since… his father had told him those stories the same way he had taught him all the spells: under the cover of night and flights in _Slave I_ , in the Mando’a dialect of Concord Dawn, where no one else could hear, no one else could learn the legacy of Cassus Vhett bound tight and secret into his descendants.

Fett’s fear of what Vader could make him do was justified, both in what could be done, and in what would be left of him afterward.

In a time of legends and horrors, Vhett had been powerful, too powerful. That power and its magic had remained at the heart of the Mandalore sector and Mandalorian customs, as an uneasy secret whose use was forbidden by warriors and aristocrats and punished by exile, and as a hidden history and tradition the farmers kept close to them. Rain spells, for all they were mistrusted, had saved Mandalorians from starvation time and time again, enough to become legends in themselves outside the wider possibilities of magic.

Rain was easy. Other things were less so, demanded tributes of body and mind. His father had made him promise never to use this knowledge, and had taught him everything they could do, from simple tracking to the most forbidden: with bread and salt and blood, to bind one’s will to another, and to resurrect the dead.

Resurrecting the dead. Fett thought about it everyday, with the part of him that had stayed in an arena full of dust and blood for the past twenty-seven years. With the knowledge that his father would kill him for bringing him back this way, would kill him for destroying himself body and mind to bring Jango back, he kept the temptation at bay.

He thought Lando came by again, a fleeting warmth at his side he had refused, denied, to miss. He thought time passed. His thoughts slipped through his fingers the same way rain had slipped on Tipoca City’s roofs.

“Have you reconsidered?” Vader said. This was another room than the cell he had been in the past… how long? A rotation ahead of the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ , he had been a rotation ahead, Vader and his ship there right away once he had sent the signal—

“Not going to do it,” he heard himself say, his breath labored. Strange. There was nothing around his throat.

Slip, slip went his thoughts like water, and it would be so easy to trace… small things, on the floor of the cell. Call down rain in a rainless place, find a seed and make it germinate in the time it took one to breathe, smell wind and let it find your prey, move to the unerring call of magnetic poles to never get lost.

He kept his hands clasped to each other. Under the tips of his fingers, his skin danced.

\+ + +

Lights. Lights and a high pitched whistle drilling into his skull and Shyriiwook— _Shyriiwook_? Fett dragged his eyes open, dragged his hands to his ears. The noise was unbearable. It gave him something to focus on, for however long he could, however long he could stay aware this time. At least the nausea seemed to have gone away; he did not try to move from the piece of floor he had curled on to test it.

More than a day had to have passed since the last time he could remember being aware: the source of the cries in Shyriiwook was none other than Chewbacca, Han Solo’s partner.

The noises stopped, and they kept echoing in his head.

“ _Are you dead, bounty hunter?”_

Fett dragged his eyes open again. _Again_. Dragged himself to awareness. At least he was now able to realize he was losing time. “What day is it?” he asked. It was slurred badly enough as to be incomprehensible, even to him.

“ _Hfm,”_ Chewbacca snorted. _“You reek of clone and sickness.”_ That was apparently all he had to say, and he crossed the cell to where a box with droids parts had been left.

Fett let his eyes fall half shut against the too vivid lights, and stared at the Wookiee putting the droid back together. It was not the same clarity of focus as the high pitched whistle of earlier, but it would have to do. Wookiee and droid, two of the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ ’s crew. Solo and the princess had to be somewhere, too. But for Fett and Chewbacca to be sharing the same cell? Bespin did not lack cells. This made no sense.

This was Lando with a plan. Fett needed a clear head, as much as he could. He would not let Vader take him, use him—he was getting out of this.

He gritted his teeth, and watched, and breathed. Slip, went his thoughts. Rain, rain, rain…

\+ + +

“Why are they doing this?” A woman’s voice said.

“They never even asked me any question,” a man’s voice answered—and this voice Fett knew. It lacked attitude, but this was Solo. So the woman had to be Leia Organa.

Fett dug his fingers at his wrist to get a clear head. It didn’t quite work, not like the lights and whistles of earlier. He opened his eyes just in time to see Lando and two Bespin guards enter the cell.

Organa growling Lando’s name was something. In other circumstances, Fett would have appreciated it.

“Get out of here, Lando!” Solo’s venom was almost to her level.

“Shut up and listen! Vader has agreed to turn Leia and Chewie over to me,” Lando said.

“Over to you?”

“They’ll have to stay here, but at least they’ll be safe.”

Fett couldn’t stop himself. He laughed, a short, painful bark. How long, had he had water at all…? “ _Utreekov_ ,” he spat. For an empty-headed fool, that was what Lando Calrissian was. Organa was too much of a wild card to be going anywhere else than an Imperial prison—or an execution.

“What’s he doing in here?” Solo asked, looking at Fett. Fett couldn’t tell if the man recognized him.

“Betrayal, Solo, what else?” he slurred. It was understandable this time: Lando visibly winced.

“You said Chewie and me,” Organa said, her attention on their situation. “What about Han?”

“Vader is handing him to bounty hunters.”

“Vader wants us all dead.”

“He doesn’t want you at all!” Lando glanced toward Fett. “He wants somebody called Skywalker.” And with bread and salt and blood and Fett’s magic, Vader wanted Skywalker bound to his will.

“And we’re the bait,” Organa said.

“Well, he’s on his way,” Lando said. Fett almost barked a laugh again. A warning, and information, and nothing near a plan—talk talk talk, Calrissian at his best. His city was already lost, and still he tried to play all sides.

“Perfect. You fixed us all pretty good, didn’t you? My friend,” Solo spat. Here was the attitude Fett had expected…and the fight—Solo tackled Lando, doing his best to punch him with limbs he could barely lift.

In the resulting scuffle between them and the guards, no-one paid attention to the necklace that fell from Lando’s cloak. No-one but Fett. The sound of the pendant falling on the floor was unmistakable, the clear ring of forged _beskar_ on durasteel. Fett’s world narrowed down to it, and he missed both the rest of the scuffle and Lando leaving the cell again.

He moved slowly from curled on the floor to slumped against the wall, feeling both dizzy and like he was going to vibrate out of his skin, possibly in pieces. He fell back to his knees the first time he tried to get up, nausea returning with a vengeance. Maybe he tried again.

“ _What are you doing?”_ Chewbacca asked, at a distance.

“Leave the man alone, Chewie,” Solo said, from the corner.

“There are enough cells to separate us,” Organa said. “Who is he, and what is he doing here?”

“ _That’s Boba Fett,”_ Chewie said.

Solo startled. He said: “What, Fett? That can’t be. He was right next to Vader the whole time!” at the same time as Organa said: “That’s Boba Fett?” Her attention shifted to him—her full attention and her anger both moving like a living thing he could touch. “What kind of sick game are you playing now?”

Fett ignored the conversation, his slipping thoughts and attention focused on the necklace and how to get there, step after wobbling step.

“ _I don’t think that’s a trap. He’s been here since I was locked here—smells like sick.”_

“That’s not exactly a point in his favor.”

Fett blinked. Solo had said— he tried to focus on words, licked lips too dry. The action felt familiar. “You said,” he said, “‘next to Vader the whole time.’”

“The armor is something of a dead giveaway, bounty hunter.”

The armor— Fett snarled, felt his lips pulling back to bare his teeth. Vader had taken _his face_ . The anger cut through enough of the fog of the magic that was urging to be used that he managed to stand up and stumble through the few steps that separated him from his necklace. His knees would pay for the rough landing later, if they were not already bleeding from the edges of the floor panels, but his hand closed on the second try on the cool _beskar_ pendant—

He could think, his skin finally, blissfully still, his thoughts his own. He ignored the noises at his back, took stock.

The concussion was easy to figure out, between the headache, the dizziness and missing moments from however long he had been there. The lump at the back of his head was tender, but there was no blood. He remembered throwing up on himself and Lando at least once; there didn’t seem to be enough nausea left to repeat that. His teeth were fuzzy, his lips cracked and bleeding when he passed his tongue on them—mild dehydration then, not helping the headache. Stubble rasped his hands as he passed the necklace’s cord over his head: more than a day of growth, two at the most. His throat was sore, but there was nothing tender like external bruises even though he felt like he had been strangled. His knees ached, not in a way that would impair movement. The last thing that registered was the cold: when his armor had been taken, his boots had been taken too, leaving him barefoot. The thin thermal shirt and leggings he wore under his flightsuit were all he had on. He had no weapons left, not even the garrote wires he kept in the outside seams of his leggings.

The weight of the pendant shaped like a sheaf of grain was a grounding weight under his collarbone, hidden as it could be under his shirt. He would need to find solutions to never be caught without _beskar_ again—underskin implant, piercing. He took a mental note, tabled it for later.

There was no time to figure out what the princess and Solo were arguing about now behind him. The door opened again, letting in a full squad of stormtroopers, with binders for each of them.

\+ + +

It seemed he had blinked and they were now in the carbonite chamber. Most sentients survived carbonite freezing. Rumors went that it had been used during the Clone Wars to infiltrate living troops behind droid lines.

Fett didn’t care about that: he cared about the person wearing his gear and face, standing on the other side of the central pit. He’d get his hands on them, and take his time. One shot to the face would not be enough. No, no, he’d make an example of them. Nobody took _his face_.

The two stormtroopers holding him up seemed to pick on his thoughts, and held him tighter. He’d have bruises, later—for now, better to let them think he could barely stand on his own, still badly concussed enough to lose time, still too lost in the magic to know where he was.

“Watch closely, bounty hunter,” the one on his right whispered. “You’re next.”

“Put him in!” Vader commanded, gesturing at Solo.

The Wookiee protested, started to fight the stormtroopers surrounding his group. Fett shifted his weight as much as he could, ready to take his chance—but Solo stopped Chewbacca before he had a shot at killing a stormtrooper. That window of opportunity closed.

Fett ignored Organa and Solo next to him—as far as intimacy went, it was the best he could give them under the circumstances.

When Solo was lowered into the pit and stuck in a block, Fett stared at Lando watching his friend being trapped. Calrissian finally seemed to grasp what kind of situation he was stuck dealing in.

Vader turned to the person wearing his gear after the block containing Solo was slammed onto the plate-form and cleared. “He’s all yours.”

The pretend-hunter turned around, leading the block out of the room. Before Fett could see which way they were going, an Imperial officer came to Vader’s side to announce that Skywalker had landed, loud enough to be heard through the whole chamber. Fett swallowed. Vader turned to the rest of the room, his attention drifting to Fett for an instant, and he gave the order to reset the chamber for Skywalker.

“Calrissian, take Fett, the princess and the Wookiee to my ship.”

Lando jumped at the words: “You said they’d be left in the city under my supervision!”

“I’m altering the deal.” Vader left in a swirl of cloak in the opposite direction of where the stormtroopers manhandled them.

Whichever opportunity of escape Fett could grab, it would have to be before they boarded Vader’s ship, preferably with less blasters to deal with. He let himself be dragged behind the princess and the Wookiee, both of them protesting.

The chance for escape came from Skywalker—the kid stood out in the curiously empty corridors, making himself into a perfect target. The Imperials were more focused on dragging the kicking and screaming princess toward their ship and returning fire than to give pursuit… and to pay attention to him slipping his cuffs off and nicking the first thing he could grab from the two stormtroopers still dragging him. A non-regulation vibroblade from the right, a length of cable from the left.

By the time Lando’s guards were surrounding the group and taking the Imperials in their own custody, Fett had disposed of his guards and taken the boots from the one formerly on the right. Lando might have said something, if he hadn’t been busy being strangled by Chewbacca.

“Do you think that after what you did to Han we’re going to trust you?” Organa spat at him.

Lando’s answers was a croak: “I had no choice…”

“Enough,” cut Fett. “Where did that imposter go?” The glare Organa shot him would have killed lesser beings. “The one who left with Solo,” he reminded her, squinting. The lights in the corridors were doing nothing for the headache throbbing behind his eyes.

Chewbacca’s bark was nothing Fett understood. The wheezing from Lando continued for an instant, before “East Platform” could be understood.

The _Slave I_ was at the East Platform.

\+ + +

The _Slave I_ had been at the East Platform, and they were too late. Chewbacca fired at it, howling in rage—an empty gesture. Even at point blank his rifle would not have done much damage to the exterior plating, much less stopped the entire ship.

His _face_. Now his _ship_. The stormtroopers coming behind them were a good target for his anger—for the fear balled deep inside he still carried. Fett followed Lando and the rebels. The princess and the Wookiee were hotheads, but they had a ship. The _Millennium_ _Falcon_ was known to be fast; it would not be fast enough to catch up to _Slave I_ , but it would be fast enough to leave the city before the Imperials got their act together and swarmed the city. Fett had no intention to stick around to see if Vader would still want Skywalker bound to his will once in a carbonite block.

More white corridors. More stormtroopers—though less than he’d have expected. They had dispatched at least three squads and met up with a droid who was apparently Skywalker’s astromech before the group got stuck at the doors leading to the plate-form where their ship had landed. Were they led into a trap?

Running to the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ didn’t feel easy: something felt off. Fett ran up on Chewbacca’s heels as soon as the ramp lowered. He grabbed Organa’s sleeve on the way, pulling her up inside while Lando covered them.

“Let go of me!”

“We have less than two minutes to be in the air before fighters surround the ship,” he reminded her. Standard Imperial tactics for grounding ships, catching the vast majority of them before their startup sequence was even ignited; it would have been thirty seconds in an Imperial-controlled spaceport. Here they had to come from whichever Star Destroyer was in orbit, and it was a window of opportunity they couldn’t lose.

She glared at him, then shouldered past him to the cockpit without a word. Lando and the astromech walked in then, ramp closing right behind them.

Lando looked at him, as if he was going to say something. Fett glared back.

The protocol droid piped up at the astromech, one shiny leg held up: “Artoo! I need your help!”

Lando looked away. He walked past Fett, face lowered, to go into the cockpit. The ship moved, taking off from the platform. The sounds from outside were muffled, but the sounds of lasers on shields were all too familiar.

His headache returned with a vengeance, beating in time with his heartbeat. There was no time for it. Fett went for the cockpit, too.

His first thought was _not enough fighters_. His second, that the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ ’s nav was a piece of junk and that the princess wasn’t half bad behind the controls. Something still was off.

“Too easy,” he said.

“ _You call this too easy?”_ Chewbacca howled, rerouting non-essential power to the shield board. A couple of sparks erupted from it with every connection.

“They’re not following standard procedures.”

“Why are you still here?” Organa asked, half turned in her seat.

Fett slid his eyes to her. “Vader wants me alive—I’m not interested in what he wants, and we’re after the same ship.”

She scoffed, turned back to the controls. “Your reputation precedes you. The bounty hunter who’ll get anything, anyone. How do I know this is not one more trap.”

“It’s not,” Lando said. “He wouldn’t have been involved at all if not for me.”

“Because _that’s_ a ringing endorsement.”

The bright flashes of lasers on the fore shield exploded in front of them—it was enough to trigger a wave of dizziness, aching behind his eyes. He gripped the top of the seat next to him hard, held on.

“You should sit,” he heard Lando say. Fett glared at him; it seemed he wasn’t doing anything else of late. Lando held his hands up. “Sorry. You don’t look so good.” Fett gripped the seat harder.

Chewbacca made a sound, then: _“Love of the ancestors,_ he’ _s the one who left?”_

Fett had no interest in following that conversation. He sat down.

Organa was too quiet, too still, in the pilot’s seat. The number of TIE fighters following them seemed to have been cut down in half in the last few minutes. The reason for that was revealed as soon as they breached the upper cloud layer: in the distance, distorted by the upper limits of the atmosphere, several Star Destroyers waited. They had been herded straight into the reach of their tractor beams.

“We’ve got to go back,” Organa said.

The Wookiee and Lando protested immediately. _“What?”_ “There are fighters and Vader back that way!”

“I know where Luke is,” she said, talking to Chewbacca and ignoring Lando. Fett stayed silent. Turning back wasn’t any worse an idea than to keep going, and it had the advantage of leaving the Star Destroyers’ immediate range. Going back for Luke –Skywalker– now, in an Imperial-controlled city, _that_ was a bad idea.

The _Millennium_ _Falcon_ turned around the way it had came from, facing renewed fire from the fighters still on their tail.

Against his hip, the vibroblade had warmed up. Fett stared at the cockpit’s canopy, at the new squadrons coming their way, at the shadows of the Star Destroyers on the upper cloud layer.

He was going to live through this, escape Bespin, retrieve his ship and take his face back. The first two steps of this plan… he could make it happen. It would cost him far more than a little blood, and it would put his life and abilities in the hands of other people; other people including Lando, other people including one of the known leaders of the Alliance. A calculated risk.

Vader would have him hunted to the edges of the galaxy now. The man would spare no expense. Fett had made too many enemies in the underworld: there would always be someone on his trail, attracted by both bounty and revenge.

An alert sounded—they had lost the port side shield. There was not enough time left to calculate the full scope of his actions. Fett grasped the handle of the vibroblade, made sure it was deactivated. He dragged the blade across the back of his opposite wrist. Blood welled up immediately, thick and warm. He got up, took his necklace off with his free hand, _beskar_ kept away from his skin; magic rushed in like warm blood in a frostbitten limb. He stuck himself between Organa and Chewbacca, in reach of the nav computer.

“What are you doing?!”

“Making sure we get through this,” he said, and he dragged his thumb through the blood to draw a circle on the dashboard. Intent might have been everything, but blood powered most of all he knew, and protection and hiding had always been closed, an exterior and an interior, magic rushing in the gap allowed by the spell. He gritted his teeth. Hiding– _we’re not here, we’re not here, we’re not here_ , and the fighters hounding them broke formation as if the _Millennium Falcon_ had never been there.

“What the…”

Too much, this was far beyond a rain spell, this was too much to ask for, he had no reserves, slip slip he was going—

“Can’t find us,” he slurred, and closing his fist hard enough to dig the edges of his pendant into his palm did nothing, did not ground him, did not keep his knees from going out under him. “Hurry,” he said, maybe.


	2. Fleeing Bespin - II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by the fantastic Norcumi — all remaining typos and mistakes are my own.

There was someone curled in the berth opposite the one Leia had pushed him in, but Luke wasn’t coherent enough when he got up and went to the cockpit to figure out who it was. He assumed it was a friend of the dark-skinned man who had grabbed him from the antenna, who knew Chewbacca, who hadn’t told him his name: just another person escaping Bespin’s Cloud City.

It wasn’t Han.

They had escaped Bespin, all of them save Han, by the skin of their teeth.

Because it had been a trap, and Luke hadn’t been fast enough, and Han had been frozen in carbonite on Vader’s orders. Because Anakin Skywalker had never died. Anakin Skywalker had become Darth Vader. _His father_ was _Darth Vader_.

The loss of his hand was not that important, when you looked at the bigger picture.

Once they had jumped to hyperspace, after the hyperdrive motivator had been fixed by Artoo, Luke had followed Leia to the main hold. There she, Chewbacca and Artoo, with translation from Threepio, finished the non-crucial repairs to the _Falcon_ they could get to. Letting Leia out of his sight, the mere idea of it, had felt wrong even as he could barely keep his eyes open.

Ben still hadn’t responded to any of his calls.

Luke blinked. A steaming mug was held in front of him. He looked up. The man whose name he didn’t know was holding the mug—was holding two mugs.

“Tea-packet and sugar–Han still doesn’t keep much onboard to flavor water.” Luke took the closest mug. “I’m Lando Calrissian, by the way. Former Baron Administrator of Cloud City.”

“Thanks.” Luke nodded. “Luke Skywalker.” The first sip tasted of nothing but sugar. He made a face–discreetly, he thought.

So much for the discreet: Lando saw it, laughed. “It’s going to taste like candy-sugar and nothing else, but I don’t think that’ll go to waste.”

Given how shaky and cold Luke felt, it was exactly what he needed. “No, you’re right, it’s good.” He inclined his head toward the other side of the bench. “Are you sitting?”

Lando shook his head, raised the other mug. “Bringing this to my friend,” he said, and Luke missed neither the imperceptible pause before _friend_ , nor the glance Leia cast their way from the edge of the maintenance access. Friend: the person in the other berth. Lando, like Han, seemed really good at keeping the face they wanted the world to see. Luke wondered how good of a sabacc player Lando was; still, Luke could feel the worry he radiated.

“Are they okay?”

Lando smiled, the picture-perfect smile of a card player. “I’m sure he’ll be back to glaring at me in no time.”

Leia came to sit next to him once Lando had left for the berths. Luke sighed, and leaned his head on her shoulder. It took a few breaths, but she leaned into him too, letting go of some of the tension she had been holding. That was better.

“Finish drinking your tea,” she said.

“Who’s Lando?” he replied, and he felt her tense up right back.

Chewbacca shook his head. “ _A professional gambler—Han won the_ Falcon _from him.”_ He patted the grate next to him, grinned. _“We have our ups and downs, but he always has a line on good work in his pocket. Won the post of Cloud City’s Baron Administrator off its previous administrator by playing cards._ ”

Threepio translated for Leia. She scowled. “He sold us to Vader in a scheme to keep the Empire off his city.”

“ _He got us out, too._ ”

“He betrayed Han and his _friend_ !” She spat the word _friend_ like it was venom.

“Who—?”

“Boba Fett,” Chewbacca and Leia said at the same time, and Luke felt his eyebrows raise in surprise. Fett’s name had not been uncommon on Tatooine: Boba Fett had been one of many bounty hunters hired by the Hutts. When Luke listened—had listened—to his uncle, their kind was one more reason to never step foot in Mos Eisley and to just stay at the farm.

Out of Owen’s hearing, Aunt Beru had had other stories, ones with his grandmother Shmi and a quiet regular visitor in armor. The first name of that man had never been Boba, for all they had shared the same last name.

He’d never hear those stories again, now, would never know how much of them were true.

“You know him?” Leia asked.

“His name only, and that he’s a bounty hunter. I think he worked for Jabba the Hutt, on Tatooine.” At her questioning look, he continued, “There wasn’t much to do aside from working at the farm and hoping to go somewhere else one day. Listening to what gossip we could get was as good a distraction as any.” He and his friends had talked about the bounty hunters like it was boloball results or speeder races, keeping their ears out for anything that was not farming or repairs or sand. The farmers had mostly been left out of the business the bounty hunters who passed through Tatooine had been there for—until one bad season, one unexpected guest, one stroke of bad luck.

His aunt’s stories, on the other hand, were family stories; those were things to keep to himself, even from Leia.

Chewie made a snorting noise. _“He and Lando have history. And we didn’t hear the details, but Vader wants him alive, and not as one of his bounty hunters.”_

Luke frowned. Leia poked him in the side.

“Finish your tea. Communications have been restored, we’ll stop and send a message soon. I’ll need your codes too.”

Luke did as she said.

\+ + +

“Come on, just a sip– better, do you… Whoa, I’ve seen you with better coordination.” Lando paused, held the mug filled with warm liquid away from the unstable hands of the man in the berth. “I’ve seen you in better shape, period.”

Boba’s eyes were half-open, the lights of the berth just enough to reflect in the golden brown of his irises. The lights were also just enough to show the uncharacteristic stubble, the emptiness of his expression, the worrying gray tinge of his tan skin.

The mug, when Lando put it down on the floor, made a very quiet click of plasteen on metal. “I’m sorry.” It was easier to talk to the floorboards. “So much for a reunion, huh?”

“ ’ndo?”

Lando jerked his head up. “Yeah, I’m right here.” He slipped his hands from Boba’s wrists to his shoulders, keeping them there. Boba had been starved for affection and touch that hadn’t come with the intent to hurt when they had met each other. Years later, he still leaned immediately into Lando’s hands.

He felt cold.

Boba was aware just a few more seconds, eyes moving across the crew quarters. It was long enough for Lando to coax a couple more sips of tea in him and then Boba went away again, too fast to swallow the last sip of liquid he had managed. The liquid dribbled down his chin. Lando wiped it with his sleeve.

He had never seen Boba like this. The rain spell he had showed Lando all those years ago had not had this kind of physical impact. This was terrifying, more so than knowing they had been at the mercy of Darth Vader, more so than seeing Boba out of his mind in the cell.

This was not how Lando had been thinking they’d meet again. After he had been forced to flee with barely the shirt on his back off of Crans after their fall-out, he had never expected to meet Boba again in any manner that would put them on anything close to good terms. Fett, after all, was becoming a name that did not refer to Jango Fett as the best bounty hunter known in the galaxy at large. As the years passes it referred more and more to his son. Lando certainly had never even thought he’d see Boba again like he had known him all those years ago: a man who could be vulnerable, and afraid, and brave, and starved for affection, a man he had loved and because they both had been young and foolish, a man whose trust and affections he had lost in a rather spectacular manner.

He took a breath, a moment to think at Boba’s side; Boba who had curled up under the blanket that had come with the berth in the tightest ball a man his size could hope to achieve.

Five millions four hundred twenty-seven thousand and eighty, give or take five thousand short-term tourists; that had been the total population of Cloud City in the last census Lando had commissioned. He hoped enough of the people with no interests in the Empire and no possibility to fight back had been able to evacuate in time.

He hoped Lobot and the men, women, and beings of the Security Forces were still alive.

Lando took another breath. Lobot would be fine. His friend had gone through much worse.

For a man who lived and breathed gambling as much as Lando did, not having control over a situation and leaving his fate in Lady Luck’s hands usually brought a certain rush of adrenaline. Not so much here. He just had to wait, and think.

He could think, and plan. Lando was rather good at building several plans at the same time. It kept his mind busy, kept his thoughts limber; a great exercise for playing sabacc, where keeping an even face and bluff were an integral part of the game, and misdirection a quite literal game-changer. There was much he could bring to the Alliance, and he hadn’t been completely oblivious as to who had bought the tibanna gas the refineries had churned out. He had even subtly encouraged people who had no love for the Empire to come buy his product straight from the source, and swing by his casinos on the way. One had to wonder where the Alliance was going to buy some of its tibanna, now that the middle men and smugglers would stay clear of Bespin. Maybe they would need prospecting—he certainly had made enough contacts in the galaxy at large to offer those services, to point them toward the right people.

This was the way the cards had fell and there was no cheating possible in this game: he had a duty to help find Han, and no interest in being picked up by the Empire again. There weren’t many opportunities these days for an Alliance-friendly gambler and city administrator: he had no doubt his face, and the faces of the people who had worked directly with him on Bespin, were now adorning the latest wanted posters. Well, that would give some of his friends in less-legal circles a good laugh when they’d see them, at least.

So the Alliance it was.

Thinking about those plans while waiting to exit hyperspace to the Alliance fleet and for whoever was going to politely interrogate him there was much better than fretting about Han’s fate, and Lobot’s; much better than worrying about Boba’s state and how long he’d be like this.

He had a lot of apologizing to do: to Boba, to the princess, to Chewie, to the golden droid—to Han when they would find him.

It was much better to stay right were he was at the moment. Boba’s wrist and the _beskar_ pendant Lando had wrapped around it felt like they were warming up under his hand.

\+ + +

Leia sat in the pilot’s chair, staring at the whorls of hyperspace without seeing them. Another six hours and they would be meeting up with the 2nd Fleet. Another six hours and she would be able to stop seeing the bloody circle on the nav computer staring back at her like an eye, able to stop wondering about how to react from what would come next from Lando and Fett, able to stop worrying about Luke’s state.

At least she had convinced Luke to sleep once they had contacted the fleet.

She hadn’t dared to wipe the blood off. The way the _Millenium Falcon_ had seemed to vanish from the Imperial fighters once the mark had been made… She shivered. The galaxy was a vast place, with many things she had never encountered or dreamed of. But if this, like Lando had sworn it had been before refusing to answer any further questions about it, had been magic… it was a tale, something to frighten younglings—admittedly, much like the Force and Jedi had been made into, just tales that defied reality. Magic belonged to a time of legends and horrors, to the Mandalorian Wars and the Sith Empire to come after them, to ships with the power to shut off stars. Magic did not belong to reality, to things happening here and now without her control.

Luke had been fascinated and wary under his still too-vivid bruises, a combination of expressions she had never seen on her friend’s face. His only answer to her questions had been to say that there were stories of magic on Tatooine, and nothing more. She wondered what Han knew of it, if he knew anything, what stories the smugglers and scoundrels kept alive. Chewie had only shaken his head when she had asked him. There had been nothing for Threepio to translate.

What she wanted, here and now for the galaxy to make sense, was every single piece of information Fett knew about his ship, how to track it, and to find Han to bring him back. Fett was however too out of his head for consciousness, let alone interrogation. If it was indeed magic that he had used and not the Force, the tales she had heard had left out the part where it weakened its wielders to the point of unconsciousness. He had been half out of his mind in the cell too, before Lando came to tell them what was going on, had that been the result of magic too?

If it all was indeed magic, and that was what Vader wanted out of the man, then it was crucial information she had to bring before the Alliance High Council, one more variable to account for in the fight against the Empire.

It was possibly a way to keep a bounty hunter who was too good and too deep in with the Empire out of commission, too.

Leia would be patient. Alderaan might not have had stories of magic of its own that she knew about, but it had had mountains, and glaciers, and volcanoes. She would keep her mother’s advice in her heart: she would be glacier and the volcano under it, unescapable fire and ice.

Leia knew how to lie in wait.

Five hours to the rendez-vous point.

\+ + +

People often forgot that Chewbacca had lived more than one life of smuggling. He was a smuggler because he owed Han Solo a life-debt, never mind that he was probably the main reason Han was still alive to this day. The gods and Force knew the man got himself into troubles like it was a hobby.

Case in point, Han got himself frozen in carbonite and transported by someone pretending to be another bounty hunter than the one the ship and armor they wore belonged to. First of all: carbonite, of all things. Chewbacca only knew of one instance it had been used on living beings, and since it had involved clones and Jedi, he didn’t know how much faith he could put on it.

Second of all… second of all, this entire situation stank, and not because of the people involved.

Chewbacca glanced back toward the crew quarters. Leia had finally convinced Luke to lie down on the bench in the main hold under Artoo’s and Threepio’s bickering, and she had left for the cockpit. Chewie had stayed, pretending to continue working—there wasn’t much he could do without parts and with the _Falcon_ in flight. He patted the grate next to him. The _Falcon_ was a good ship, and she deserved much better than smugglers perpetually down on their luck.

That left Lando and Fett in the crew quarters.

Oh Chewie would have kept strangling Calrissian earlier with no problems. Now though, Lando could help find Han—he could help persuade Fett to help, if only to retrieve the bounty hunter’s ship.

People often forgot Chewbacca was a Wookiee, and that they were a very long-lived people. He had seen the Clone Wars, had fought on Kashyyyk, had seen the Republic troops turn as one against their commanding officers.

For all the clones then had looked like Fett, the magic was new.

Magic that was not farming related, like in the oral histories he had learned as a child, gave him the creeps. It was the magic stories did not talk about but in between the lines, advice and warning both. He could almost hear those in the hushed whispers of aunts and uncles relaying them. The memory was enough for the undercoat at his nape to raise up.

Fett using blood to do what he had done—and had saved their asses in the process—had made the undercoat of his whole back rise up.

\+ + +

Coming to the 2nd Fleet and the _Redemption_ should have felt better than this. They had, after all, survived Hoth, survived the Empire finding them, survived Vader. They were alive to keep fighting.

Leia sighed. There were too many variables thrown in, too many things to analyze. She would need to know how many escaped Hoth safely, what they needed to replace and search for, how much time she could realistically devote to finding Han.

Luke and Fett were whisked off to one of the many medbays of the medical frigate, with Artoo determinedly following after Luke. Lando was politely escorted to a cabin, and he went with a smile, chatting to the Chitanook lieutenant who led him away. Chewie made it clear he was not getting anywhere that was not the _Falcon_ and the repairs they still needed to finish now that they were in a hangar. The team of mechanics that converged to the ship had bug-sniffers extended, and a hyperspace probe ready to launch, should any Imperial bug be found and needed to be disposed off on a false trail.

Leia was escorted to a room some way off the bridge, where water and caf were available. Threepio followed her there, tucking himself in a corner in sleep mode to 'recover from this ordeal, really Princess—'

It didn’t take long before the most senior officer onboard appeared. The captain of the _Redemption_ nodded sharply in dismissal to the two people who had escorted Leia in. Her nod to Leia was more measured, lekku barely twitching.

“Princess, it is a great pleasure to see you well,” Captain Nacolnie va Zéna said. She strode to stand by one of the seats. “I must ask: where were you?”

“We evacuated Hoth on Captain Solo’s ship,” Leia said, with as little change in intonation on Han's name as she could. va Zéna’s understandable distrust of smugglers, from years of encounters around Ryloth and during the flight of several Twi’lek communities off the planet, was certainly not to the level of General Ackbar’s. It was however one more thing for Leia to keep in mind while speaking to the Captain. “The hyperdrive malfunctioned and we had to hide in the asteroid belt. We lost the Imperial fighters on our tail there, but then had to continue to a friendly system on sublights. Captain Solo and Chewbacca both had a contact on Bespin, in Cloud City, who’d be able to make the repairs. Unfortunately, the Empire came to them first. Captain Solo was captured and abducted by a bounty hunter of unknown whereabouts. We were able to flee the city only with the interventions of Lando Calrissian, who was the administrator of the city,” just because she didn’t trust the man didn’t mean she could not recognize what he had done, “Commander Skywalker, who provided key distraction,” and she hesitated for a second, “… and Lando’s friend.”

va Zéna raised her brow, picking on the hesitation immediately. “Does this friend has a name?”

Leia laced her fingers together over the cup of caf she had poured herself earlier. “Captain, it might be preferable to keep that name quiet for the moment… and in light of some things that happened during our flight from Bespin, both his identity and what he can do should go straight to the High Council.”

va Zéna seemed to stand up even straighter. “Princess, I am responsible for every life on this ship. I cannot do my job without information; and that includes knowing who is on-board.”

Leia took a breath, looked at va Zéna in the eyes. “Captain, what do you know of magic?”

va Zéna’s lekku twitched madly along her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> °Jango and Shmi knowing each other is a long-held headcanon of mine, and recently FettsOnTop wrote a great piece exploring just one of those moments in Bonds of the Past (http://archiveofourown.org/works/8573767)  
> Memories, memories...
> 
> °the Chitanook species is borrowed from Flamethrower's sprawling epic of awesome Re-Entry/Re-Entry: Journey of the Whills (GO READ IT if you have a good week free in front of you http://archiveofourown.org/series/10129)


	3. Alliance - I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by the amazing norcumi. The remaining convoluted sentences are entirely my fault.
> 
> The Penlight of Doom is universal.
> 
> Edit: Mando'a check by [kaasknot](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot). Thank you!

Fett’s first thought was that this was not the _Millenium Falcon_. The vibrations of the engines were fainter, hinting at a much larger ship. Then there were the odors: bacta, metal, recycled air fresher than the _Falcon_ ’s, disinfecting liquid above the hint of bodily fluids. All hinted at a medbay, and by the voices he could distinctly hear, one with a Korunnal accent, another speaking Ryl, this was a Rebel medbay. This was a Rebel ship.

The thought right after, the one that accompanied him moving his hands slowly to check for restraints without raising alarm, was _ow._

There were no restraints, just the rough-smooth of a bandage on the wrist where he had cut himself, the familiar fabric of his undershirt, the smooth slickness of a survival blanket. Every part of him hurt like he had gone blow for blow with a Wookiee and fell through several layers of wroshyr trees again, with a generous helping of being cold and feeling stretched thin on the inside.

Was this only a consequence of the magic, or had the concussion and dehydration played a role? Despite the promises he had made his father a lifetime ago, Fett had used his magic, more than once, always in small ways. He had hidden himself a couple of times, when stealth was needed and he had inadequate cover. He had never hidden a ship the size of the _Millenium_ _Falcon_ before, never done that on something that was so clearly in plain sight and targeted, never done it for more than one person. Hiding only himself had resulted in tiredness and headaches, easy enough to power through on a hunt, never something like this. He took a mental note: without some kind of back-up, hiding a ship, four people, and two droids left him a liability for an unknown length of time. He was not interested in experimenting further.

He opened his eyes, and it took a breath too long to stop blinking and keep his eyes open. Another breath. He moved cautiously, sitting up and able to feel every single muscle ache, his skin feeling raw. There was an IV at the crook of his elbow, the bag hanging above marked as human-safe fluids for rehydration. His necklace was wrapped around his right wrist, _beskar_ pendant warm and tucked snug against his pulse. Only Lando would have known, so had he…

Fett startled. There was a human in pale scrubs and dark hair shaved short at the foot of his cot, and he hadn’t seen them move in through the privacy screens, nor had he heard them. Fett gritted his teeth. He should have never been caught unaware in unknown territory, regardless of his physical or mental state.

“I’m Doctor Reem Geprost, and you’re onboard the frigate _Redemption_. Can you tell me your name?” The doctor was the Korunnal accent he had heard earlier. They got closer, and Fett fought the urge to recoil at someone he didn’t know in his space so soon after waking up while he had no armor and no weapon.

“Might be best I keep that for myself for now,” Fett answered. His lips didn’t crack and bleed on the words. Progress.

The doctor made a snorting sound, clearly not impressed with his answer. “Suit yourself, you’ll be the one dealing with the captain.” Then another sound, amused, as they glanced from datapad to him. “Well, seeing you awake and aware is a definitive improvement. You could do with a meal and more fluids by oral intake—do you live only on foodboards and rations? You’ve got the distinct nutrient markers of a restricted diet.”

Fett didn’t answer that. He couldn’t see the rest of the medbay beyond the privacy screens, couldn’t see who Organa had inevitably assigned to keep the Alliance’s eyes on him close and personal. “Did I get a guard?”

Doctor Geprost smirked, did not glance toward any part of the medbay, did not give anything away. Well trained. “Yep, makes me wanna know your name even more.” They poked at their datapad before poking at the IV bag. “Now, any lingering dizziness or headache?”

“No.” He would not mention the feeling he had been beaten black and blue. He had enough weaknesses out in the open.

“Nausea?”

“No.” He scowled at the light the doctor shone in his eyes. “And no to blurry vision, too.”

“You got a nice thick head then. You feel any dizziness, headache, or nausea, you let one of us know immediately, got it?” Fett gave a small nod, if only because the doctor expected an answer with all of their body language. “You’re to stay another two hours there, until the IV runs out. A droid will bring you food and water. If I’m satisfied with your state after that, you’ll be free to go, and then you got people very impatient to talk to you. Anything you want to ask?”

“Clothes?”

“Once you’re free from my clutches. Hope you don’t mind ‘vaguely green-ish with a chance for frayed hems.’” They busied themselves with the datapad for a moment, then all too casually, tapped Fett’s bandaged wrist. “Do we need to talk about that?”

Fett rarely considered what exactly his body looked like. It was one more tool at his disposition, and so he took care of himself, staying limber, strong, and fast enough to do his job. He knew he had scars—on Mandalore and Concord Dawn it had been a mark in his favor.

He had more than one straight scar across that wrist, the cuts healing paler against his skin. The magic he knew, the one beyond rain spells, he paid for in blood.

Blood and salt and bread and his entire being if Vader got his hands on him.

He breathed. That those marks could be mistaken for something else, that was the problem of the ones making the assumption, not his.

“No,” he said.

The doctor did not look convinced. “Suit yourself. We’re open shift-round if you change your mind.”

Fett laid back down once the doctor left. He wrapped the blanket tighter around him and curled to his side to conserve heat.

At no point had his genetic profile been mentioned. Deliberate omission or was it simply not part of the Rebellion’s standard intake procedure? Then again, this was the Rebellion. Maybe they just didn’t care that his genetic profile had been shared by over five million other people. Fett had never tracked down any of the Republic clones, for any amount of credits and any reason, but it hadn’t been hard after the end of the war to know than more than one of them had vanished from the new imperial army and had joined fighting groups; that ultimately many had joined the Rebellion.

He felt a new rumble of anger at the one who had dared take his face. Maybe he would take theirs, blood and skin and all, once he caught up to them. Without his helmet, _his face_ , and reputation—who was he, if not a man taken all too often for a clone who hadn’t had the decency to die with the rest of the old war’s trappings?

That anger was old.

He clenched his fists, feeling the tightness of scab and new skin on one hand, _beskar_ edges on the other. The edges reminded him of Lando, the only one who’d have known to put the necklace back on him…where was the man, now? Talking his way into the Rebellion, inevitably. He was good at that, ever the charmer in the same way snake charmers on Rodia were charmers: because they knew the being in front of them was much larger and could strike at any time.

The next two hours were spent napping, as nothing would happen to him there, or it would have already happened to him; planning thoughts of revenge, as bloody and effective as he could make out; and figuring out what to reveal to whoever would interrogate him. Would he be offered asylum by the Rebels? It was a possibility. At least he knew the princess wanted to track his ship: this was something he could ask payment for.

He was a bounty hunter, a _beroya_ like his father had been. This was the way he understood the world: everyone wanted something done, and he could get those things done, for a given price. He wondered what the Rebels would ask of him—he already knew he could not afford what Vader wanted.

He slept.

\+ + +

The food the droid had brought him had been perfectly bland, the water flat and tasteless, and Doctor Geprost, after the required two hours, had declared Fett “fit for whatever was to come.”

After finally shaving, the one who looked back from the mirror of the medbay ‘fresher looked nothing like Boba Fett. Fett blinked at his reflection until the feeling that he was not quite in his own skin went away. He added the moment of dissociation to the earlier mental note as he left the 'fresher: there really would be no more experimentations with hiding.

The cloth uniform he had been given was slightly too large in the shoulders, too long in the legs, and soft from repeated washings. The hems were close to fraying like the doctor had warned, and it was barely warm enough to deal with the clinging sensation of cold inside him. He hoped he was not wearing a dead person’s clothes. It seemed rude, like he was taking the way they had been for himself without it being part of a disguise for a hunt, without a clear goal in end.

Then again, this was the Rebellion. There were more chances this was from a Rebel who had never made it back than not.

The uniform had come without a weapon, of course. His necklace returned around his neck, hidden by layers of clothes.

Now here Fett was, in another nondescript ship room, after going through unremarkable corridors that didn’t seem to have been modified from the standard plans for a frigate of this type. The room hadn’t been built to be an interrogation room, too large for that, but the lone table and three seats bolted to the floor made a credible attempt to pretend to be one.

The guard who had been assigned to him, a tall Bothan lieutenant, had accompanied him from medbay to this room without a word, without rushing him from the slower-than-usual stride Fett had taken—feeling every single of his muscles protest—, and without any indication Fett was anything other than a guest of the Rebellion. No shoving, no badly veiled intimidations, no threats, not even a hint the lieutenant knew who Fett was. The Bothan had stepped in the room after Fett and had taken his post next to the door, looking right ahead. Ten minutes later, he still hadn’t moved.

In the corridors, Fett had rated indifference and a couple of puzzled double takes. The latter interested him, if only to have something to think about while waiting: there was more than one probable reason for those. The ill-fitting uniform was one. The most obvious was that the ones doing the double take had met or seen clone troopers when they were his physical age, after the end of the war. Possibly there were still clones in the ranks now, pushing human physical middle age despite being half the chronological age.

Leia Organa entered the room, interrupting his thoughts. Fett didn’t rise from his seat, his arms folded in front of him on the table the same way he had been since sitting down. She dismissed the lieutenant from the room then she moved further in to stand by the chair on the other side of the table. She made no move to sit. She was wearing white. In all the pictures he had seen of her, from her Senate confirmation to wanted bulletins, she had always worn white. It probably meant something other than death to her culture.

“Fett,” she said, with a slight head nod.

He returned it, after a beat.

“Thank you for your assistance in escaping Bespin,” she continued. “We would appreciate if you provided your services to locate your ship.”

“To find Solo.”

“Yes.”

“You are aware that he has a bounty on his head, a non-negligible one.” Jabba had made sure Fett had seen it. The Hutt had never hidden his appreciation for how Fett did his job. Had things gone differently on Bespin, Solo would still have ended up in the _Slave I_ ’s hold with Fett at the helm, flying off the floating city in the direction of Tatooine, the Hutt, and enough credits to be selective about the next contract he’d have to take.

Now that things were the way they were, returning to Tatooine was running straight into Vader’s arms. It was well-known that Jabba employed Fett regularly: it was a boast for the slug to be able to pay him. His palace and the spaceports would be under surveillance.

“Are you saying you want that bounty?” Organa asked.

“I’m saying he’s going to be hunted by bounty hunters of varying skill levels on the promise of that bounty no matter where he goes once you get him—if he gets out of the carbonite.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Will you provide your services to the Alliance?”

Fett waited for a breath, a second one. “What’s in it for me?”

“Your ship, returned to you. Your armor, too.”

His anger at having his face and the identity he presented to the world taken from him was rekindled at her words. “Not good enough.”

“If it’s a matter of payment, we can certainly negotiate that.” She did not change tone, made no move that indicated her topic change as she asked: “I want to know why exactly Vader wants you.”

He breathed. There it was. Fett contemplated not telling Organa anything. He contemplated telling her a lie. His gut instinct told him she’d see through both methods and would wait him out as long as she needed—half truths it was, then. He blinked slowly, an insult if she caught it. He missed his helmet. “You already know.”

She shook her head, a hand going to the back of the seat in front of her, a physical emphasis. “ _Lando Calrissian_ told me some of why, and it amounted to ‘it’s magic.’ I’d like to know more than rumors, your demonstration, and the mark you left on the _Falcon_ ’s nav computer. Are you a Force-user?”

Fett kept his reaction in check as best he could. _Now_ he really missed his helmet. “No.” He wanted the weight of his rifle in his clasped hands. He wanted to cross his arms across his chest, but she’d catch that, too, and he wasn’t quite done with this conversation.

She tilted her head to the side, waited. He was familiar with the technique: wait and people will fill the silence. He decided to cut that particular silence short, if only to not have to dwell about _Force-users_. “It’s not talked about with outsiders.”

“ _Aruetii_ , you mean?” She used the M andalorian word for _outsider_ —which also meant _foreigner_ and _traitor_. Quite an illuminating view into the Mandalorian psyche. It was rather interesting that she knew that word in the first place, and that she tied it and Mandalorian culture by extension back to him. He did wear the armor and followed most of the _Resol'nare_ , the code that defined the _mando’a_ culture his father had shared, but he had rarely publicly claimed his relation to it and to Mandalore as a whole. Rumors had their own strengths. With the mess that the Mandalorian Sector had tuned into over the past twenty years, rumors were also a safety. If no-one knew for sure one way or the other, it left him maneuvering space.

Many of the ones who would have had a definitive answer on the basis of their relations to his father and the memories of their last name, what it had been before _Fett_ and the possibilities this entailed, were dead.

She sat down. In his experience, royalty could make a throne out of any seat. Not Organa, not here—she sat like a soldier, ready to jump back up, ready to dig in and wait. He would have to throw her a bone, something.

“No. _Outsiders_. Start with Mandalorian history. Other places have other starts, other traditions.”

“Mandalorian history has quite the range. Anywhere in particular I should start from?”

He let the silence stretch. He had, after all, all the time he wanted, and not much interest in answering more of her questions—at least the ones about magic. She was welcome to find out more about that on her own.

It did make him wonder how Vader had known, who he had talked to, or to which documents he had access to that he had known the full extent of Fett’s capabilities on what Fett assumed had been a throwaway line from Lando.

Organa moved in her seat, leaning away, falsely relaxed. He waited her out. It took less time than he had started mentally counting for until she spoke again. “You won’t tell me more, will you.”

He looked at her in the eyes. “I only ever told one person.” _Look where it got me_. He would need to have a…conversation, with Lando. And another after that, about a moment in the cramped bunks of the _Millennium Falcon_ he wasn’t certain he hadn’t dreamed.

That last one he was not looking forward to. Or maybe he was. He was honest enough with himself to recognize he had missed Calrissian.

She stared back at him. After a moment, and Fett could only wonder what she had seen or found in his face, she nodded to him in a brief, brusque move. “Thank you for your help on the _Millennium Falcon_.” She got up. “You’re free to go through the public areas of the frigate, as long as Lieutenant Yahnn is with you. I’d like to talk to you again, later.”

Organa stood up. Fett didn’t move.

“I’m not interested in joining your movement, Your Highness.”

“And I appreciate your honesty. We do have something in common, though. You want your ship and armor back, I want the person your ship is carrying brought back to the Alliance. Vader is after us both, and from what I understand of the situation, he will not let you go even if you bring him back half the Alliance in chains, let alone mere information.”

He nodded. She was correct. If Vader had him, there would be no bargaining of any kind: he would use Fett until there was no hint of magic in his bones, leaving behind only an empty shell and nightmares unleashed in the galaxy. His old companion Fear crept back in.

Organa smiled.

“I look forward to working with you, Boba Fett.” She pushed a datapad to him.

He waited until she left and Lieutenant Yahnn came back in to pick it up. It was a standard contract for the search and retrieval of _Slave I_ and its cargo. The fee line had been kept blank, with only a comment of “to be negotiated” underneath.

He wondered if Leia Organa and the Alliance would ever let go of him once they knew all that he could do.

+++

Organa had to know what she was giving him by letting him free to roam the public areas, even with a babysitter. The engines, bridge, gunning positions and medical areas other than the general medbay were off limits, but everything else was open. Fett could even walk in the hangars and maintenance bays. He could have walked up to the first X-Wing they came across and left with it—before being stopped by the patrols that were flying around the frigate, or stopped from even lifting off by the teams of mechanics and troopers and droids present everywhere. The frigate was packed.

Lieutenant Yahnn kept trailing silently behind him.

Fett’s earlier suspicions that the corridors hadn’t been modified since their initial building were confirmed. There were marks of wear and tear on all surfaces, then the marks of maintenance and repairs. Neither type of marks was coming from custom reconstructions, from discolorations to interrupted patterns in the riveting or the odd corridor twist. He couldn’t quite believe that there were no smuggling compartments or optimized space anywhere he had been able to see.

There was no immediate use for this kind of information. There was never such a thing as useless information.

Now in the middle of the third level toward the bridge, a direction he had chosen at random after the interrogation room and the hangars, it was just more of the same. It at least felt marginally warmer going this way.

“ _Vod’ika_.”

The voice at his back was right, and wrong. It sounded older than he had ever been able to hear it, and the accent wasn’t the same as in his memories. Fett stopped in the corridor, Lieutenant Yahnn an arm’s span away behind. He forced himself to not stand up any straighter, to not betray his reaction; he missed his armor and helmet then more than at any other time before. Regardless of whether he kept himself in check, regardless of armor and helmet or lack thereof, if the one who had called him _vod’ika_ was who and what he thought, they would see right through him.

“I’m not your brother,” Fett said to the corridor in front of him.

“No,” the one who had called him _vod’ika_ said, “you’re the heir, the son—but what else would I call you?”

Fett turned around. The man in the corridor behind Yahnn had seemingly been pushed further than the human physical middle age he should have been straight into old age—but without any hint of having lost strength or sheer presence on the way. His head was shaved, his thick beard was silver and white, his brown skin was tanned and wrinkled by sun and time. He filled his uniform and half-armor like they were a second skin to him, like Fett was used to wear his own armor. His hands were steady at his sides, right next to the twin blasters at his hips.

The man looked nothing like Jango Fett. His father hadn’t had the time to grow old.

“By my name,” Fett answered after a pause.

“Boba Fett,” the man—the clone—said in a tone Fett couldn’t get a read on, then gave a sharp nod. “I’m Rex; Commander, Alliance Intelligence.”

Lieutenant Yahnn glanced warily from Fett to Rex, ears flat on his skull like he was expecting them to jump at each other’s throat. Fett mentally dismissed him and focused back on the clone—on Rex. The name seemed familiar.

“ _Su cuy'gar_ ,” Fett replied, _you're still alive_. It cost nothing to be polite and greet him in the mando’a manner. Most of the early clone generations had kept up with the language and the customs, even when none of the Mandalorian trainers his father had picked had remained once year ten of their contracts had come to pass.

Rex nodded, acknowledgment of the greeting. “Would you mind company? I’m off-shift and been told to take a walk away from the training rooms. Too much of a taskmaster.”

It certainly was a polite request. The fact Rex was a clone and was part of Alliance Intelligence did not leave Fett much space to decline without attracting attention—without more attention than was already on him. The fact that Rex was a clone and knew of him— _the heir, the son_ —made him wonder if he was Organa’s ace up her sleeve here, her in with him. Showed what they knew about him, if they thought meeting with a clone would make him talkative.

Rex’s presence at least explained the double takes from earlier.

Fett turned back toward the direction he had originally been going in, kept walking. Rex fell in step with him.

Fett couldn’t help feeling that he was being measured, assessed. He was used to it: it came from his clients, from his marks, from the general public. From a clone, from a man like Rex who seemed to take more space in the corridor than was physically possible, with a strength in his steps echoing of others long gone, it poked at old wounds.

Armor or no armor, there would be no hiding from Rex, and Fett found the idea intolerable.

“What do you want,” Fett said, after three squads, two mechanics and a couple of droids passed them by. The stretch of corridor around them seemed empty enough for a conversation. Rex—Fett knew he knew that name, that he had heard of it, and the sensation was like a sliver of shrapnel shifting under his skin with each heartbeat. The sensation was too close from what he recalled of the past few days and being lost in the magic: it kept him on edge. His only certainty was that Rex’s name was tied to the war and to the blasted Jedi, and it and helped nothing.

“Company,” Rex answered. “And to be honest, curiosity too: you’re one of the last people I’d have expected on board an Alliance ship.”

“That makes two of us,” Fett said.

“Rumor goes you came with Commander Skywalker and Princess Organa.”

“If that’s your roundabout way of asking if I’m on a hunt, the answer is ‘no.’”

“ _Gar ori’jate beroya,_ Fett,” Rex said, and it took Fett a minute to mentally translate the mando’a. _You’re an excellent bounty hunter_. He had no indication on how to take it—flattery, warning?

Fett glanced at the man. Rex was looking at him, something like half a smile on his face.

“Are you the only one on board?” Fett found himself asking. He was not going to be surprised by another clone’s presence if he could help it.

“As of now,” Rex said, the half-smile still there.

They didn’t say anything else to each other until they reached one of the observation bays that opened on the dark of space under the bridge. Fett did not recognize the constellations displayed. Several Y-wings passed by. Between the packed frigate and the number of capital ships he could make out further away, he estimated he was in the middle of a good quarter of the known Rebel forces.

The known numbers were certainly wrong.

When Fett recalled where and when he knew Rex’s name from, he almost gave it away. He covered the realization with a wince, shifting as if he hurt, one hand going up to lean on the cold viewport—and he did ache still. Being underestimated was always a good move; here he could play up the injuries. His sleeve hiked up as he leaned against the transparisteel, showing the bandage around his wrist.

Rex glanced at him, had to have seen the bandage. “Everything all right?”

Fett did not answer. The lieutenant, behind them, spoke for the first time: “Do you need to return to the medbay, sir?”

Fett noted that the Bothan still hadn’t said his name. “No,” he answered, making a show of straightening up and passing both hands on his face. “Anywhere I can go crash?”

“This way,” Lieutenant Yahnn said, already turning around.

Fett gave Rex a parting nod. The clone returned it.

A part of Fett had stayed in an arena full of dust and blood for the past twenty-seven years; he had kept up with the going ons of all the people that had been present that day. Almost all had died in the war and the purges. Then there had been Windu, of course, who in the official record had been killed during the assassination attempt on Palpatine; the human who had come to Kamino, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had gathered such a bounty on his head by Year Three of the Empire that he had been more a legend of a hunt than a real one; the Naboo Senator, Padmé Amidala, who had been turned into a rallying figure at her death for everything the Empire claimed to want done; and Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin Skywalker, who had been a friend of the then-Chancellor Palpatine; Skywalker, who had vanished during the Purge but had never been officially killed. _Captain_ Rex of the 501st legion had been his second in command during the Clone Wars. Said legion had remained almost identical through the transition from republic to empire. Only its leader had apparently changed: Darth Vader, right hand man of the Emperor, who had seemingly come out of nowhere bearing a Sith title that the rest of the galaxy was turning a blind eye to.

Mandalorians had long memories. The Sith and Jedi, _darjetii_ and _jetii_ , had waged their wars for centuries, hiring Mandalorians or hunting them in the process. Sith and Jedi were two sides of the same card and like cards, allegiances turned.

On Bespin, Darth Vader had demanded of Fett to resurrect his wife, twenty years dead, and to bind Luke _Skywalker_ 's will to his. The leap of logic was more of a step to the side, a confirmation of previously gathered hints and possibilities. There was, after all, never such a thing as useless information.

Fett was reasonably certain Darth Vader had been named Anakin Skywalker once.

Many things could change in over twenty years, but Fett had not made his reputation of being one of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy by ignoring information, and being reckless.

If Organa had not sent Rex to oversee Fett, it was a possibility _someone else_ had.

 


End file.
